Mother's Day::to the one it hurts:: {beauty in the rocks}

It's arrived on advertisements in your mail, screamed from the television, played itself out between your pandora songs.
This vicious reminder that scrapes up against your wounds.

It looks at you from your calendar, sounds on the lips of your co-workers and friends, rides the waves of pinterest and facebook posts right into the aching, freshly opened chasms of your soul...

Mother's Day.

This day of pictures posted, flowers received, and grand greetings in the hallways of church...

It must feel so very daunting and painful, and does anyone really see and know?
Do the ones who do know look the other way or offer awkwardly empty assurances?
Do you wonder if by next year....? Do you recall wondering that a year ago?

I am so very sorry, dear friend...

I have a mother who loves me and continues to move towards me.I have children; three littles in arm, and two in heaven.
Hear me speak this -there are whole canyons of pain in your world that I have little experience with
and small ability to imagine,

but I do see you.
I have experienced YOU!
I know that this day hurts you.

I want you to know that, and there is something else I want you to know too.

I celebrate YOU - yes you - as the sweet, beautiful, mothering woman that you are!

Mothering was created by God.
Mother's Day was not.

The design to mother was given by God to a woman
before a baby ever breathed air upon this earth.

A child does not make a woman a mother.
The woman, through her mothering, makes the child her's.

Mothering is something we learn to chose,
not something we achieve biologically...

When you carry life-giving hope, tend the helpless,
correct the erring, and instruct the naive...

When you feed the hungry, heal hurts, hold the crying, and calm another's fears....

When you pray soul-deep-groaning prayers for another...

When you speak of your deep longing to see all of your life-laid-down-service culminate in the matured and prepared independance of those you have loved....

This is the real mothering.
This is the noble glory business...tending to what is young while gently led by The Shepherd.
He sees you there, faithfully working your skills into the reflection of His image,
and He delights over you!
I can just hear His heart say,"There she is, my child, recreating her faith, hope, and love into the lives of others.
Pouring out her heart and soul for their good.
Through her sacrifice, in a thousand unseen ways, my life flows through her.Exactly what I was getting at with,

'be fruitful and multiply'."

So for you, my friend whose arms remain empty; the phone silent; the nursery still waiting...

For you, my friend, who remembers on this day littles that warmed your womb but never drew breath...